Mobile computing devices (e.g., mobile telephones, smart telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable media players, etc.) have been configured to receive and process voice, or spoken, input when explicitly prompted to do so by a user. For example, mobile computing devices have been configured to begin monitoring for voice input in response to a user pressing and holding a button down for a threshold period of time (e.g., one second). For instance, if a user wants to submit a verbal search request to such a mobile computing device, then the user has to press and hold the button down for at least the threshold period of time before submitting the voice input, otherwise the voice input will not be received by the mobile computing device and the search request will not be processed.